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Should Schools Search Cellphones?

By Tara Parker-Pope July 6, 2010 10:25 amJuly 6, 2010 10:25 am

Lars Klove for The New York Times

Cyberbullying is a growing problem in schools everywhere, as described in Jan Hoffman’s story “Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray.” Readers recently submitted numerous questions about cyberbullying to our expert, Elizabeth K. Englander, a professor of psychology and the founder and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College. The center provides anti-bullying and anti-violence training programs and resources to schools and families. Here, Dr. Englander addresses the issue of personal privacy and the school’s role in monitoring cellphones.

Q.

I am well aware of the rising issue of cyberbullying; however, why should schools have the right to search cellphones? They are personal property just as much as a backpack or purse. Teenagers are often very emotionally dependent on each other and talk through private issues and problems through text messaging. Teachers and principals don’t need to see this information, as it may not only embarrass the student but also compromise the teachers views and/or opinions of the student. Overall, searching of cellphones should be unjust, unconstitutional and unnecessary. Julian DeVille

Mike George/Sun ChronicleElizabeth K. Englander, Ph.D.

A.

Dr. Englander responds:

You’ve asked a question with both legal and psychological implications. Because I am not a lawyer, I won’t focus here on the legal rights of schools to search cellphones or any other property. But there is another side to this issue.

Schools and educators operate in loco parentis — that is, they are responsible for the well-being, safety and education of the children in their care for six or more hours a day. Because they have this responsibility, and because children’s actions may at times endanger their own safety or the safety of other children, schools have an obligation to monitor students’ behavior. Thus, personal privacy at school is not absolute, and it never can be.

Imagine a scenario in which a child had taken a topless photo of a 12-year-old girl, and a third child reports this fact to a school administrator. If the administrator chooses to do nothing, then the child in the photo can (and probably will be) readily exposed on the Internet, which could jeopardize her personal safety. That safety, when balanced against the offending child’s right to privacy on his or her cellphone, would probably be seen as more important by many people.

On the other hand, schools are not literally parents, and some parental actions should probably be confined to the jurisdiction of the home. For instance, imagine if a school administrator decided to routinely check the contents of any cellphone that he or she confiscated, and upon doing so, discovered evidence that a child had stolen $5 from the parents, which the administrator then punishes the child for. Most people would agree that that would be a violation of the parents’ right to respond to private misbehaviors.

As with most things that are difficult, we’re going to have to find a middle ground. To keep kids safe and to make sure they grow up with good guidance and education, we need to know what they are up to, and thus we limit their privacy. But some things should be left to parents.

See Dr. Englander’s earlier responses in the Related Posts section, below, and check back later for more answers later this week.

Schools are being asked to replace parents, not only during the school day (in loco parentis) but in addressing after school behavior which may or may not have a nexus to the issues a school is responsible for addressing.

As usual, all depends.
* On administrator/ teacher and what probable cause. Is it a safety issue, a bullying issue or mere curiosity?
* On student’s age, behavior and some fair consideration of Free Speech and Privacy rights
* On giving parents some reasonable chance (when possible) to be part of search decision.
* On social norms and school rules. Can a teacher search a girl’s purse to read a note passed to her in class? Can a teacher turn on a lost phone to determine who it belongs to? What about computers as smart phones are little but the same functionality?
All depends.

Except in instances of parental abuse of children, a public school should be limited to notifying the child’s parents of suspected misconduct, bullying, and so forth — and no more. Giving school administrators any more power than that is just an excuse for early indoctrination of children into Big Brother’s Nanny State.

In cases where there is a reasonable grounds to believe parents have been abusing the child (or likely will, if they are notified), then the matter should be referred to competent authorities in child welfare and/or law enforcement.

The rights granted under in loco parentis have always been limited in scope. A teacher (or anyone legitimately caring for someone else’s child) is empowered to make decision that are immediately necessary to protect the child’s well-being. For example, the adult is expected to seek medical care for the child if the child is in immediate need of it, to have sufficient authority over the child to order him or her to stop and wait for traffic when crossing the street, or to say, “No, you can’t have cotton candy and jelly beans for lunch.”

Of course the answer is “no”, and I can’t believe my beloved New York Times is even entertaining the question. How can we expect our children to appreciate and exercise their civil liberties as adults if we raise them in a totalitarian nightmare world?

Invoking the hypothetical topless 12 year old is the kind of emotional canard one usually sees from the Right; the writer’s frightening logic applies just as well to adults. Shouldn’t we randomly search adults on the street and check for such things — for everyone’s safety, of course. After all, somebody might possess something he might use day to commit a crime.

Compromise is the correct and pragmatic thing most of the time, but why is it that when it comes to our privacy rights, “compromise” means steadily giving up privacy and getting nothing in return? Privacy has been eroding for some time, and it must stop. Leave kids and their cell phone messages in peace.

Schools should ban cell phones. My teacher friends are told they can’t do anything to stop the messaging that goes on while they are teaching. Why are schools going along with something that clearly distracts from the purpose of educating. If they can’t live for the school day without a cell phone there is something seriously wrong. Someone has to say “make it stop” since the parents aren’t being parents and the children just don’t know any better. Go to school and be at school. Make your calls later.

If students want to have cellphones at schools, all cellphones are subject to search at any time, just like the contents of backpacks and lockers. No appeal, no question, search on demand – schools already have this ability, which would include reading journals, diaries, or personal notes, so cellphones would be treated exactly the same.

If students don’t want to have cellphones searched, absolutely no cellphones are allowed on the school premises with penalty of the cellphones being confiscated and significant detention awarded for possession of a cellphone.

What the students then do outside of the school premises becomes wholly the responsibility of their parents.

“which could jeopardize her personal safety. That safety, when balanced against the offending child’s right to privacy on his or her cellphone, would probably be seen as more important by many people.”

Besides on TV shows this has been proven not to be an issue. Nearly 90% of child abusers are relatives. The other 10% have rarely if ever targeted individuals that they saw in photos on the internet.

Since it is not a real threat, it is not justification to violate civil liberties. If you want to take away our Civil Rights you have to at least have a credible threat. As Ben Franklin said, “He who is willing to sacrifice a little Freedom to gain a little Safety deserves neither…” The key words here being “little.”

It is a long way from an administrator choosing to do nothing and instead confiscating the phones in question, sitting the kids in their office and waiting for the respective parents to come in and work out the problem.

Unless the incident or situation requires IMMEDIATE action for the health and safety of a student the schools should have no rights whatsoever over the children in their care. In Loco parentis is just that PURE LOCO, its nuts that this PHD actually thinks this and shows stacked examples to make her point. The world is changing all the time and technology is a problem to be dealt with, but giving schools the right to do whatever they want is not a solution in a country that believes in Freedom. Even the extent of the debate itself would have been unheard of in this country twenty years ago.

It seems the assaults on our freedoms are only speeding up in the name of keeping everyone safe, I would rather be FREE and take care of my own families safety and I’m sure many American’s are also in my shoes.

Dr Englander, I believe you are misinterpreting the power and scope of ‘in loco parentis.’ It may have been a good idea, since you’re not a lawyer, to have consulted one before answering the question since it is largely a legal question. The law constrains teachers and administrators from many actions you might feel would be in the students’ ultimate best interest, but, if done wrongly or over the top, would be a serious violation of their privacy. Courts err very much on the side of student rights.

In loco parentis does not give schools the power to act fully as parents nor to “have an obligation to monitor students’ behavior” if it steps across the bounds of privacy or is not reasonable. It merely gives the power to act reasonably as a caretaker in the parents’ absence while using best judgment. School’s powers are very limited. For instance, to use an example that comes up all the time in my own high school classes–many teens use drugs and drink. On many occasions, I have suspected that a student is walking in drunk or on drugs. But I have no legally recognized signs–the student’s pupils are fine, they are walking a straight line etc. It’s just that I know them quite well, and I see right away when they walk in that they are acting very unlike their ‘regular’ selves. (And of course it doesn’t have to be illegal drugs–they could be on legal meds, just have withdrawn from legal meds, they could have a mental disorder, etc.) I cannot report each and every one of these students. I would get fired and/or sued, certainly.

If I were a parent I could easily haul their butts to get them tested, I could have a frank discussion, etc. But as their teacher, I would get sued and fired if I were to do so–unless their drugged state were SO obvious that I FAILED to do something and later on, they were injured or died. Then I could get sued too!

And therein lies the problem. Right now, schools are in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t legal nightmare. It is completely unpredictable WHICH event a parent might decide to sue over and why. Sometimes the bullied sue; OFTEN the bullies sue (that’s why they’re bullies, folks). Sometimes you’re sued if you try to do too much; sometimes you’re sued if you try to do too little. The administrator in your example who ‘did nothing’ didn’t decide to ‘do nothing’–he decided that in this particular instance, he did not have the legal power to act. Of course he may end up being wrong. This is the fear we teachers and administrators all live under.

I take ‘in loco parentis’ very seriously and many times I’ve helped students whose parents were neglectful or worse. For instance, a girl with a gash across her whole face because her grandmother attacked her (child services was called and did nothing). I was the one to tell her about scarring and to recommend vitamin E and other ointments and to send her to the nurse. Not her mother, her grandmother or child services. Another example among many: yet another teen walks in pregnant. The parents encourage the student to drop out and ‘keep the baby’ but don’t do a thing for the student or the baby, including setting them up for a physical or buying a crib. I am the one who listens, who helps, who sends to the nurse when appropriate (but I can’t judge either way–I am NOT the parent!).

We teachers can only do so much. There is a vast tide of neglect and abuse and just poor parenting and increasingly parents want the schools to not only be ‘in loco parentis’ but “parentis.” So many parents are failing in their jobs. I speak as a parent myself, and I know how hard the job is. But please, do your jobs. Don’t purchase an internet enabled phone for your child; don’t allow them to use one at school (there is no educational purpose); don’t buy them a phone that can text photos. Then your child won’t be ABLE to text photos! Be the parents. Talk to your child. Listen. Act.

At the risk of sounding obtuse, if there are so many problems relating to an unnecessary adjunct to the educational experience, why don’t schools just ban cell phones.

I was able to get through school from the first grade to the end of high school, through four years of college, one year of a masters degree program, a program to secure a teaching certificate and three years of Law School without ever having a cell phone. I survived without a profound sense of isolation that not having that cell phone might have caused, if there were such things, and was not unhappy.

If there were no cell phones there wouldn’t be any text messaging in school, there wouldn’t be any twitter, fritter or face book or anything else. Keep cell phones out of our schools and so many problems will be avoided.

Even in the example given, the most the school should do is notify the students parents.
Unless the misbehavior occurred on school property it is beyond the school’s purview. Because all a talking to from the school is likely to achieve is that the student hides the offending photo better, or stops showing it at school.
Of course, the school could also call the police and have the offender arrested for child pornography offenses and forced to register as an offender for the rest of his/her life. Was the offending photo taken by a 12 year old? an 11 year old? a 14 year old? All different circumstances requiring different responses.
Kids might not have a reasonable expectation of privacy whilst at school, but at least let their parents have a chance to do the parenting.

Ok, a little common sense is in order. I would expect that the vast majority of cell phones carried by children are ACTUALLY owned by the parents, who buy the phone for them and pay the cell phone bills. Therefore, it should be the parents who either confiscate and/or investigate cell phone use by their children. Again, this should be obvious to all concerned. This is the same situation as found in a previous article in the NYT about installing spyware on childrens computers, or directly monitoring its use by children. That is the right and the responsibility of the parents, the child doesn’t decide this issue. And responders actually suggested its an invasion of the childs rights to take the computer out of their room and put it in a common space so the parents could monitor the websites the child was exploring!!!! Have we all lost our collective minds??? The PARENTS are responsible for the safety and welfare of their children, first and foremost. We used to understand this, why dont we now??

You don’t keep a free society by raising your society’s children in a police state. America’s children are going to be America’s citizens. If you would not be happy with the government reading your email you should not be happy with schools reading childrens’ text messages.

I agree with comments that cell phones should be outright banned and calls made later. And that we have lost our collective minds if we think that schools should tolerate texting in class. I have no plans to give my three children cell phones when they get older, let alone allow them to take the cell phones to school. They can get them when they can pay for it themselves. I hate it when my adult university students text each other during lectures and meetings, it was tolerated too much in high school, now they are addicted and have no sense of propriety. It is also affecting their academic performance. I feel that parents just are not considering all the ramifications both social and academic. My daughter was writing nasty notes to another girl and I was glad that the teacher caught it and I could correct it. I hate to think what my daughter would have done if she could text, so yes I think that schools should search cellphones.

This reminds me of the recent incident in which a young girl in grade school was stripped searched by a school administrator for supposedly possessing drugs. She had Advil, or something else similarly insignificant. Yet the action was defended for the safety of the student, and what’s worse, they didn’t tell the parents before they did it.

Aside from being a violation of her personal boundaries and rights, it seems downright abusive and disgusting to have done that to a child. Scanning a student’s phone is akin to scanning a student’s diary, or checking in on them when they’re in the bathroom, or strip searching them, is offensive and it assumes the child is doing something wrong, or is going to. It gets to the point of being emotionally abusive.

Were I the student, I would completely distrust the school officials. I feel fortunate to have completed high school in 2003, back when kids were not violated or harassed in the name of protecting other kids.

On the point about monitoring a child’s Internet usage, my parents didn’t monitor my usage when I started surfing the Internet….but then again, my parents taught me not to do stuff like share my personal information with strangers in chat rooms, or schedule meet up times with strangers, or surf the net for destructive material, or take and post naked photos of myself.

What are kids going to look up? At worst, porn? Lie about their age to buy cigarettes online? Voice their opinions on a political site? Post to wikipedia? Or develop a gambling problem?

Most kids aren’t stupid. But a child actions are evident of how they were taught by their parents’. Parents who feel they did not teach their child well should be the ones who should be worrying about the dangers of the Internet.

If problems should arise because a child is inappropriately using a cellphone, the cellphone should be taken away, and inspected. Most parents give their child a cellphone for safety reasons. In the event that a child takes a picture of his or her classmates genitals, or even has been suspected of doing so, he or she has violated the purpose of having a cellphone. The child should be disciplined, and the possiblity of that photo getting on the internet should be promptly removed.

Children are not adults, they cannot properly rationalize because their minds are still developing. They make mistakes, adults should be available to correct them.

A child should not be concerned about how their instructor will view them after such an incident. If an instructor should show some form of retribution to the student, then the instructor should be disciplined. If an instructor cannot compartmentalize the particular situation, should hold some grudge against the student, then the instructors is at fault for being incompetent and unprofessional.

If the real reason for this rule is in fact bullying then this is a strange and impersonal way of addressing the issue. Children would ideally have both a school and home environment where they felt comfortable discussing these issues. If this is not the case then we have larger issues to deal with than verbal taunting.

In our district cell phones were banned. The parents lobbied for a change in policy, allowing kids to carry their phones but they must be turned off, and kept out of sight. If a phone is used during class, it will be confiscated and the parent must come to school to retrieve it.

I think this policy makes sense. Even in areas where it is possible to walk to school very few kids do. So there is not a large group walking home. The houses along the way are usually empty during the day when everyone is at work. There are not any payphones to be found. My child frequently walked home, almost 2 miles from middle school, arriving home shortly before I did. The cell phone was my security blanket.

I think schools do need to have the legal authority to intervene in cases where electronic media events are impacting the school population. As a parent I monitor my child’s use. I saw a video some boys made of themselves harassing another boy. I called the principal and showed him the video. He was then able to intervene. (The video was made on school property.)

I do wish that the cell phone manufacturers would make a phone that had text capability but did not have a camera. I think cell phone cameras are the source of a lot of these problems.

Anything that teachers or administrators can find WILL be used against the student. The Supreme Court recently ruled that it is inappropriate to search a student’s body without their consent–(in that case they were feverishly looking for legal medication which had not been approved before hand). This is a red flag that our schools have gone too far.

There is no substitute for good parenting; it is too often confused with policing–BE SUSPICIOUS OF ANYONE who wants more power over our children to act ‘in a child’s best interest’.

You don’t need to search a student’s phone to help them. Zealous watchdog mandates are a mask for incompetence.

If children are in school they are supposed to be paying attention to what is being taught not what is going on with their cell phones, the texting, etc. Teachers could do what was done when I was in school: take away the note and give it back at the end of class. That way the child’s privacy is respected but she loses the cell phone for the class period. The next time she can lose it for the day. A note can be sent to her parents telling them that she cannot control herself with respect to the cell phone. Then it becomes the parents problem.

I don’t know about schools proactively searching cellphones without cause, but I think schools are well within their rights to have a ‘no cellphones during school hours’ policy. They are a major distraction, and if parents have an emergency and need to contact their child, they can call the school office and have them page the kid to call home. Between the texting, sexting, cyberbullying, cheating and just plain inattentiveness when kids should be listening to teachers, cellphones at school are wrong. Also, these iPhones and the like are expensive and probably encourage theft. Another headache to deal with.

If kids must have cellphones, let them keep them in their lockers during the school day, and access them for messages during lunchtime and after school.

Cell phones are part of our culture, whether we like it or not. Children need to learn that in school, just as in the workplace, there are times when cell phone use is appropriate, and times when it is not. Cell phones are, more than ever, a safety device that all children should have access to throughout their day. While schools should enforce rules pertaining to when cell phones can and cannot be used (i.e., not during tests or during class), I do not think that schools have any right to search such personal property. Maybe if we stopped treating kids like they lived in a prison, they would act more mature with regard to these and other similar matters.